Where Smoothies, Salads, and Silliness Reign Supreme and Mediocre Food Photography is Celebrated!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

But It's Not Quite 450 Degrees In My HOUSE....Yet!

For the love of Pete, I have no clue why I thought it would be a good idea to turn my oven up to 450 degrees and bake a pizza on the hottest day of the year. Perhaps the heat addled my brain a bit. But I'm stubborn like that - I had planned to make pizza for dinner, and doggone it, face-melting heat and humidity would not stop me!

Full disclosure: I had already pre-made some of the pizza toppings the day before, so I was somewhat forced to go through with said pizza-making. The truth was, I just wanted to drink some carrot juice and eat frozen bananas for dinner.

This pizza takes a little bit of work. There are several steps involved, and things that need to be done ahead of time, so it's definitely not a pizza you can make on the fly. But with a little advanced prep, you can assemble this pizza rather easily and throw it in the oven without too much fuss.

Here's what I did:

Step 1: early in the day (or even the day before, like I did), roast your peppers and onions.

It's amazing how much they shrink!

Step 2: prepare the red pepper jam, then set aside to cool.

Step 3: cube your tofu, prepare your marinade, and place in the fridge so it can get all tangy and feta-like:

These are the two steps I did the day before. These are also the two most time-consuming elements of the process, so putting the pizza together was actually a breeze. I made a quick pizza crust (whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, spices, olive oil, and water), topped it with some quick pizza sauce (canned tomato sauce, garlic, basil, and oregano), the pepper jam and feta, and baked it for 8 minutes:

Then I pulled it out of the oven, topped it with some steamed baby spinach and sun-dried tomatoes, and baked it another 2 minutes: